Maartje Salee
Maartje Salee is a character mentioned in the Ghostwriter book Digging For Clues. She was born in the 1600s, and the team finds her diary that she left behind in Brooklyn. Summary Gaby, Tina, and Jasmine decide to work together on a history project about New York, concerning a construction site where some valuable items from the 1600s had been found. They hear a meeting about discovering more items to stop the construction of a new supermarket, led by a woman named Frieda, who is studying to be an archaeologist along with her partner Ted. The three go to the site afterward and discover an old bronze pendant. Tina hurries to her house after that to find that her father is angry with her older brother Tuan. She later sadly writes in her diary. Ghostwriter switches the words around to a diary entry written by someone else that is feeling distressed. Tina asks Ghostwriter to find something else that the person wrote, and the ghost replies that it is difficult since the writing is very faded. He does state that he found the name Maartje Salee nearby, with an age, eleven-years-old. Tina is surprised since she is also eleven. She asks who Maartje is, and Ghostwriter replies that he does not know, but he will search for something else she wrote. She calls Gaby on the phone, stating that she thinks that Ghostwriter had discovered a diary entry and that Maartje is in trouble. Gaby wonders if she is from another country. Tina ends the call, and wonders what is currently happening with the mysterious girl. The next day, Tina goes to Gaby’s house to find out that her friend has called a rally about Maartje. The four older members of the team soon leave for a meeting at Hurston. Gaby wonders if there is nothing else to find out about Maartje, but Tina states that if she were in the same situation, then she would want someone to knows that someone was on her side. Ghostwriter brings them more of Maartje’s diary, which states that she had lost a pendant that her father had gotten from the Bight of Benin, and that her family has to leave home due to the Red Coats. They are confused, and Gaby thinks that the Red Coats are a gang, though Tina is doubtful. They go to the library, and discover that the Maartje's pendant is from Africa. Gaby and Tina then go to a telephone booth, but do not want to call the fifteen families with the last name Salee. They ask Ghostwriter to find Maartje in Hurston's school records, but he cannot find her in the entire borough of Brooklyn. Later they go to the construction site. Tina and Gaby find out from Frieda's partner Ted, that Maartje's pendant is definitely from Africa, and that the pendant that they, plus Jasmine had found is the one that Maartje had lost. They decide to call another rally. There, the team is sent an entry where Maartje states that her family is about to leave her home, and that she is going to leave her diary behind. Tina asks Ghostwriter if that is the end of the diary. The ghost responds that that is the end of that entry, but there is another entry after it. From it, they discover that Maartje is half Dutch and half African, and that her family would possibly be in trouble from the Red Coats since her father is African. The Red Coats might have even not allowed her mother and father to stay together. When first learning English, Maartje had thought that it was a sort of secret language, but had learned the importance of knowing it. Ghostwriter then sends the team a poem. The team finds out that it will lead to a treasure, starting at a tree. They do not know where to start, though. Ghostwriter brings them a list of births for Maartje and her siblings, starting with the oldest- Maartje, Klaas, Willem, Anne, Meindert, another sibling named Klaas, and Wilhelmina. All of them have van Salee after their name. They found out that Maartje was born in 1653, and that people in the construction site were discovering things from her family's house. The Redcoats Maartje had mentioned were from the Revolutionary War. Ghostwriter gives the clue C-7 near the diary. They go to the construction site, and in the C-7 section, they found a box that had been discovered, and find the entries, written in an old Bible, as well as the poem. Using the instructions in the poem, they find the treasure, which is a horde of valuable brass items. Frieda and Ted are excited, since the brass items prove that the construction site is special, enough to stop the construction. She states that there is now proof that this was one of the first African settlements in Brooklyn, and that they could learn how the family lived day to day. Tina imagines Maartje's family living in their house long ago. Later, the brass items are put in their own display in a museum. Category:Book Characters